Inside Health

VITAL SIGNS: AT RISK

VITAL SIGNS: AT RISK; 'Kangaroo' Care for Underweight Infants

By John O'Neil

Published: November 20, 2001

In developing countries, the number of underweight infants needing special care far outstrips the cribs available in neonatal units. To help free resources for the tiniest and most fragile babies, a technique called kangaroo mother care has been developed for newborns who, while underweight, do not require intensive care in the hospital. A new study in the journal Pediatrics found the method to be as effective as more traditional methods.

With kangaroo mother care, the baby and the mother have skin-to-skin contact, with the baby on the mother's chest 24 hours a day, feeding almost exclusively on breast milk. Generally, the babies go home and are closely monitored there.

In a study at a hospital in Bogotá, Colombia, 764 babies who weighed about 3 to 5 pounds were assigned randomly to kangaroo care or to incubators. Over the next year, slightly fewer children in the kangaroo group died, and infections among those children were less severe. Children in the kangaroo group also had slightly larger heads.

The researchers noted that the children spent fewer days in the hospital and, in particular, in neonatal units. ''It thus can alleviate the pressure on the already strained neonatal facilities in less developed countries,'' they wrote. At the same time, they said, the greater involvement of the parents in the kangaroo method and the close contact between mother and child can humanize the often distressing practice of high-tech neonatology.